Letters Home from a Yankee Doughboy 1916-1919

“You are certainly doing fine in writing and when I don’t have to wait for and ans. from my last and you don’t either it keeps us close together and I don’t relize even yet that you’re so far away. As long as we have something to say every day to each other we will be all right.” -Letter from Em, 7/21/16

Letters from home have always been the lifeblood of morale for every soldier far away from those they love and Sam Avery was no exception. As a prolific writer to his family and friends, Sam enjoyed much “return fire” from home during his time South on the Border and Over There in France. Some of this correspondence is preserved as part of the Avery Collection in the form of letters and postcards from Em, Lena and others who kept in touch with Sam.

"Letter From Home" by C. LeRoy Baldridge, 1918

In the genre of eyewitness history through letters, examples of correspondence from the home front prior to the advent of email are much more rare than the letters sent back home. Soldiers under combat conditions usually did not have adequate means to carefully save and store the letters they recieved while moving in the field, and were also obliged to destroy personal materials before engaging in offensive operations.

These letters to Sam from the home front in Boston 1916-1919 reveal a society fully mobilized for Victory and offer a rare glimpse into the lives of those belonging to the Most Gallant Generation who hung the Blue Star Banners, participated in the Liberty Loan drives, planted the Home Gardens and did their share of self-sacrifice for those “behind the gun.”